FIDE Grand Swiss: Gukesh's Woeful Run Continues As World Champions Goes Down To Turkish Teen

Indian GM D Gukesh’s struggles at the FIDE Grand Swiss continued as he went down to his third straight defeat, losing to 16-year-old Turkish Grandmaster Ediz Gurel in the seventh round of the event on Thursday.

Returning to the board after the rest day, Gukesh’s fortunes at Samarkhand did not change as much with the World Champions going down against the Turk, three years his junior, as the Indian blundered his bishop towards the end of the game. Gukesh had earlier gone down to USA’s Abhimanyu Mishra and Nikolas Theodorou of Greece in the lead up to his game against Gurel and now has three points from seven outings and needs to win all of his matches to stay in contention.

Indian GM Nihal Sarin seized a share of the lead with a thrilling victory over overnight leader Parham Maghsoodloo of Iran. Joining him at the top is German GM Matthias Bluebaum, who defeated Arjun Erigaisi. Both now have 5.5 points.

Seven players, including Vidit Gujrathi, Iranian-French star Alireza Firouzja, Uzbek GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov, and Americans Hans Niemann and Abhimanyu Mishra, are tied for second place with five points each. Each won their respective matches in the seventh round to close in within half a point of the leaders.

R Praggnanandhaa defeated Israeli GM Maxim Rodshtein, bringing his total to 4.5 points. He joins 10 others at this score, which includes Erigaisi and Pranav Venkatesh.

In the women’s section, defending champion Vaishali Rameshbabu regained the sole lead with her fifth win of the competition, defeating Chinese IM Guo Qi. GM Divya Deshmukh also secured a win.

The top two players from each section will qualify for the Candidates tournament in 2026, which will determine the challenger for the next World Championship match in both the men’s and women’s sections.

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